東興國小

(That's Dong Shin Elementary School for those of you who can't read Chinese).  Way back in the fall I posted some pictures of my other school, Shun An, fully intending to post some pictures of Dong Shin soon after, but time slipped away from me and then it rained basically every day (or so it seemed) and I try to avoid getting wet at all costs so I didn't want to walk about the school grounds if I didn't have to.  Anyway, last Friday was a mostly sunny day so I took a stroll about documenting a few things that I see every day that I'm there.

Here's the hallway as I'm standing outside the teacher's office looking towards the English classroom and 1st and 2nd grade classrooms (and the scooter parking lot way at the end)

This is what I look at every day except the desks are filled with students then

Here's one of our sinks.  They're outside several of the classrooms

The scooter parking lot.  Mine is the one with the helmet and rain pants hanging on the mirrors

Here is the playground. It's off to the right of the paved area in the picture below

This is the front of the school and the big paved area is where the kids play during breaks, do their stay healthy dance, and line up at the end of the school day before they are released to go home, among other things 

Here's a diagram of the school (although I've never seen any other foreigners at the school,
let alone any in hot air ballons!)

Here is our statue of Confucius

And last but not least, it's the track

Well, that's a little bit of Dong Shin (also spelled Dong Sing and Dong Xing-you can take your pick) where I spend my Wednesdays, Thursdays and Fridays.  It's smaller than Shun An and only has about 120 students, so each grade only has one class except for 5th grade which has 2 classes of 14 students.  Apparently 28 was the cut off for size because the 6th grade class has 27 students.

One thing I should have taken a picture of (although a picture couldn't do it justice) is the brick road that goes around the school to the parking lot.  This road is the bane of my existence.  Most of the bricks don't lay flat but instead stick up or are missing.  Every day I  bounce down it on my scooter struggling to keep a pace that gets it over with as quickly as possible (and past the amused stares of all the 6th graders who are strewn about cleaning the school grounds, except on days I arrive a bit late, in which case I drive even faster) but I also struggle to keep the pace under control so I don't go off the road into the gutter or just go completely flying off my scooter.  Every time it's a close contest between the road and me, although I've seen steady improvement (in myself, the road has stayed pretty much the same) mostly because I've found the parts of it that are the smoothest and easiest to drive on. Oh Dong Shin.  Always an adventure.